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;void(0)) POWER . . see: "AUTHORITY" see: "FORCE" see: "STRENGTH", "STRENGTH & WEAKNESS" see "POLITICS" for other related links - Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton (18341902) British historian. Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton [3 April 1887] (published 1904). & see: Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat. --John Lehman (1942 ) American investment banker and writer who served as Secretary of the Navy [1981-1987]. & see: Power does not corrupt man; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] & see: Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil. --anon. - Cleisthenes enacted new ones [laws] with the aim of winning the people's favor. Among these was the law about ostracism. --Aristotle (384322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. _Constitution of Athens_, In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004]. Cohan & Major note that: Ostracism involved exiling any citizen who appeared to the people to be too powerful and a potential threat to the constitution. The citizens wrote names on a potsherd (ostrakon). Whoever received the greatest number of votes and not fewer than 6,000 had to settle his private affairs within ten days and leave the city for ten years. It did not involve disgrace or loss of property, and during the Persian Wars in the first half of the 5th century those who had been ostracized were recalled to help the city. Knowledge is power. [Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.] --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Meditationes Sacrae_ [1597] "De Haersibus" Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power. --Benazir Bhutto (19532007) Pakistani stateswoman. Interview on "60 Minutes" (TV show) [8 August 1986]. Power to the people. --Black Panthers Party slogan [c. 1968]. The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of Error. --William Jennings Bryan (18601925) American Democratic and Populist politician who ran for the presidency three times without success. Speech at the National Democratic Convention, Chicago, Illinois [1896]. I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and liberals at bay. And the nation free. --William F. Buckley Jr. (19252008) American author and journalist. _Up From Liberalism_ [1959] Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword. --Edward Bulwer-Lytton (18031873) British novelist and politician. _Richelieu_ [1839], act II, sc. ii Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. --Edmund Burke (17291797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. --John C. Calhoun (17821850) American political leader who was U.S. congressman, secretary of war, vice president [18251832], senator, and secretary of state. He championed states' rights and slavery. Speech [27 May 1836]. Black power! --Stokely Carmichael (19411998) American civil-rights activist. Remarks at rally [16 June 1966]. 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master that's all.' --Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898) English writer and logician. _Thorough the Looking-Glass_ [1872] The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages; it marks its victim; denounces him; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments. --Henry Clay (17771852) American politician. - Power multiplies flatterers, and flatterers multiply our delusions by hiding us from ourselves. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a mean to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. It was observed of [Queen] Elizabeth that she was weak herself, but chose wise counsellors; to which it was replied, that to choose wise counsellors was, in a prince, the highest wisdom. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. - All men would be tyrants if they could. --Daniel Defoe (16601731) English novelist and journalist. _The History of the Kentish Petition_, addenda, l. II [17121713] [Americans] no sooner set up an idol firmly than [they] are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments. ... Any man, who attains a high place among you, from the President downward, may date his downfall from that moment. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. (In the 1840s.) One of my high-school teachers in India liked to say, "If Hitler had been ruling India, Gandhi would be a lamp shade." This man was not known for his sensitivity, but he had a habit of speaking the truth. His point was that the success of Gandhi and of the Indian protesters, who prostrated themselves on the train tracks, depended on the certain knowledge that the trains would stop rather than run over them. With tactics such as these, Gandhi and his followers hoped to paralyze British rule in India, and they succeeded. But what if the British had ordered the trains to keep going? This is certainly what Hitler would have done. I don't see Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun being deterred by Gandhi's strategy. Even as the Indians denounced the West as wholly unprincipled and immoral, they relied on Western principles and Western morality to secure their independence. --Dinesh D'Souza (1961 ) American author. _What's So Great About America?_ [2002] Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they have resisted with wither words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. --Frederick Douglass [Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey] (c.18181895) American abolitionist, reformer, and writer. Speech in Canandaigua, New York [3 August 1857] "The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies." ^ Dwight D. Eisenhower (18901969) American general and statesman, 34th President of the United States [19531961]. Some months after the end of his term as President, Eisenhower was asked if leaving the White House had affected his golf game. 'Yes,' he replied, 'a lot more people beat me now.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ England, an old and exhausted island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Poor Richard's Almanack_ [July 1755] ^^ How much power does the president actually have? Enormous power. In foreign affairs, he is basically an elected four-year dictator. Especially since the beginnings of the cold war, at the end of the Second World War, the president and his minions have presided over a vast, secret, shadow government a kind of state within a state. Partly because of the foul seeds sown in the struggle against communism, a monstrous, bloated structure arose, deep in the bowels of a democratic society: a national security and intelligence apparatus, including the CIA and its covert operations, all of this virtually unchecked and unbalanced, with vast sums of money at its disposal. The public never saw it, never wanted to see it; Congress dished out the money (hidden in various nooks and crannies of the budget) and either blinded itself or was co-opted or approved or did not care. All of this underground government answers, in theory, to the president. The practice is no doubt more complex. Congress, under the Constitution, has the power to declare war the presdent does not. But this is now only theory. The president, in fact, now always fires the first shot. In the second half of the twentieth century, he was the one who declared the wars; he decided on war or peace. In 1950 the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. This was a major crisis, and the president, Harry S. Truman, responded to it vigorously and immediately. What followed was a real war, and a bloody one; real people died; real armies clashed; but Congress never "declared" it a war. Since then, the United States has deployed armies many times in Vietnam, in Grenada, in the Persian Gulf, in Yugoslavia. Never once has Congress made the first move; never has it voted to declare a war. President Kennedy backed an ill-fated invasion of Cuba, which came to grief at the Bay of Pigs. This was only the most notorious of many actions which a whole series of presidents planned, connived at, or arranged during the cold war a whole series of dirty, covert, warlike moves, many of which amounted (legally) to acts of war. Congress did enact a War Powers Resolution in 1973, insisting that the president had to "consult with Congress," if at all possible, before sending troops "into hostilities." But this is mostly sound and fury, signifying nothing. For the most part, in foreign affairs both Congress and the public accept the imperial presidency. Of course, even dictators take public opinion into account; and presidents certainly do. In this country what people think and feel and want can be a powerful restraint on the president's power. It matters what people say on the street, in barber shops, in town meetings, and in letters to the editor. Sit-ins, riots, demonstrations, and other acts of civil disobedience also matter. It was public opinion, not law, that brought down President Lyndon Johnson and ended the war in Vietnam. The formal law was toothless and unavailing. The president, in domestic affairs, is extraordinarily powerful, too; but he is definitely not above the law. An instructive instance was the famous steel seizure case. The president was the same Harry Truman who took the country into the Korean War a move few people really questioned. In 1951, in the midst of this war, steel companies and their unions locked horns over a work contract. Attempts to mediate the controversy failed. In April 1952 the United Steelworkers announced an intention to strike. The president ordered the secretary of commerce to seize the steel mills. Management was told to keep the mills going, under presidential rule. Truman told Congress what he had done. Congress did nothing one way or another. The steel industry now went to court. No statute authorized the president to seize steel mills. But a war was going on an undeclared one, to be sure. Truman insisted that his authority to carry on the war gave him inherent power to act as he had. Six justices of the Supreme Court disagreed. Truman had overstepped the bounds. Only Congress could have ordered or authorized the seizure; and Congress had specifically refused. A generation later, in United States v. Nixon (1974), in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the Supreme Court again solemnly (and this time unanimously) declared that the president was not above the law. The president had to answer a subpoena demanding that he release certain tape-recordings of conversations in his office. And in the case of Paula Jones, the Supreme Court (again unanimously) allowed a lawsuit against President Clinton (for sexual harassment) to proceed. The incident had happened long before Clinton became president. A sitting president, said the Court, has to answer for claims, so long as they do not arise out of his official conduct. America can be proud of these cases, of course. Nobody is above the law, not even the man in the White House, the man with his finger on the atomic button, the man with the red telephone, the leader of the free world. These cases were a ringing endorsement of the rule of law. --Lawrence M. Friedman (1930 ) _American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002] Ch. 20 "Taking Stock" pp. 599601. ^^ If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its laws. --George Gerbner (19192005) American professor of mass communication. _Bill Moyers' Journal_ "TV or Not TV" [23 April 1979] - Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture. --Barry Goldwater (19091998) American conservative politician. _Why Not Victory?_ [1962] Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberty in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen, must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will. And this nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom. --Barry Goldwater (19091998) American conservative politician. Speech to the Republican National Convention [16 June 1964]. - The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. --Thomas Gray (17161771) English poet. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. --William Hazlitt (17781830) English essayist. _Political Essays [1819] "The Times Newspaper" The West is overwhelmingly dominant now and will remain number one in terms of power and influence well into the twenty-first century. Gradual, inexorable, and fundamental changes, however, are also occurring in the balances of power among civilizations, and the power of the West relative to that of other civilizations will continue to decline ... The most significant increases in power are accruing and will continue to accrue to Asian civilizations, with China gradually emerging as the society most likely to challenge the West for global influence. These shifts in power among civilizations are leading and will lead to the revival and increased cultural assertiveness of non-Western societies and to their increasing rejection of Western culture. --Samuel Huntington (19272008) American political scientist. _Clash of Civilizations_ [1996] pp. 82-83. History reveals the Church and the State as a pair of indispensable Molochs. They protect their worshiping subjects, only to enslave and destroy them. --Aldous Huxley (18941963) English novelist (Grandson of T.H. Huxley.) _Themes and Variations_ [1950], "Variations on a Philosopher" There is no king, who, with a sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. Letter to George Wythe [13 August 1786]. I don't want loyalty. I want *loyalty*. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket. --Lyndon B. Johnson (19081973) American Democratic statesman, President [19631969]. Quoted in David Halberstam _The Best and the Brightest_ [1972]. Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Letter to John Taylor [18 August 1763]. Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. --Carl Gustav Jung (18751961) Swiss psychologist. _The Psychology of the Unconscious_ [1943] The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) American civil rights leader. _Strength to Love_, ch. 7 [1963] Power is the great aphrodisiac. --Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923 ) German-born American diplomat. In "The New York Times" [19 January 1971]. Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing. --Louis L'Amour [Louis Dearborn LaMoore] (19081988) American author of Western fiction. _The Haunted Mesa_ [1987] - The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. --"Ladies' Repository" [September 1849] but note: All history shows that the hand that cradles the rock has ruled the world, *not* the hand that rocks the cradle! --Clare Boothe Luce (19031987) American playwright and politician. _Slam the Door Softly_ [1970] - - I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. Letter to A.G. Hodges [4 April 1864]. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. - May the Force be with you! --George Lucas (1944 ) American screenwriter and producer. _Star Wars_ [1977] (screenplay) - It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles. --Niccolς Machiavelli (14691527) Florentine statesman and political philosopher. _Discorsi_, bk. 3, ch. 38 [1531] Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. --Niccolς Machiavelli (14691527) Florentine statesman and political philosopher. _The Prince_ [written 1513] ch. 8 - Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' --Mao Zedong (18931976) Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's communist revolution. Speech [6 November 1938]. The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. _Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks_ [1956] The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of actions of any of their number, is self protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_ [1859] - A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. --Napoleon I (17691821) Emperor of France [18041815]. [Women] belong to the highest bidder. Power is what they like it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs. --Napoleon I (17691821) Emperor of France [18041815]. Attributed in Constant Louis Wairy _Mιmoires de Constant, premier valet de chambre de l'empereur_ [18301831]. - It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society [the people] gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power. --Albert Jay Nock (18701945) American libertarian author and social critic. The power of the press is very great, but not so great as the power of suppress. --Lord Northcliffe (18651922) British newspaper proprietor. Office message "Daily Mail" [1918], in Reginald Rose & Geoffrey Harmsworth _Northcliffe_ [1959]. - 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, pt. I, ch. 3 [1949] Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949], pt. III, ch. 3 - Those who voluntarily put power into the hand of a tyrant or an enemy, must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves. --Gaius Julius Phaedrus (c. 15 B.C. c. 50 A.D.) The versifier of Aesop's Fables in Latin. _Fables_ v. I, no. 31 "The Kite and the Pigeons" Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. --William Pitt, the Younger (17591806) British prime minister [17831801, 18041806] during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Speech in the House of Commons [18 November 1783]. Once a ruler becomes religious, it [becomes] impossible for you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell. --Muammar Qaddafi (1942 ) Libyan leader [1970 ]. October 1989 remark to the General People's Congress [Tripoli]. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide as, I think, he will. Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips, and guns or dollars. Take your choice there is no other and your time is running out. --Ayn Rand (19051982) Russian-born American writer. _Atlas Shrugged_ [1957], ch. 2 "The Aristocracy of Pull" Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. --Charles Reade (18141884) English novelist and playwright. _White Lies_ [1860] It is of the utmost importance that there should not emerge in the Republic a single man...assembling in his hands total power; who, when he has it, will employ it in the destruction of any who refuse to march under his banner. --Maximilien Robespierre (17581794) French revolutionary. I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.' --Governor of New York Theodore Roosevelt [1899]. In G. Wallace Chessman _Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power_ [1969] p.70. No, little rich boy, there is no third principle; there is only money and poverty, and have and lack, and right and left; there is only me against the world! The world is not ideas, rich boy; the world is no place for dreamers or their dreams; the world, little Snotnose, is things. Things and their makers rule the world. For things, the country is run. Not for people. When you have things, there is time to dream; when you dont, you fight. --Sir Salman Rushdie (1947 ) Indian-born British novelist. _Midnights Children_ [1981] - Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. _Human Society in Ethics and Politics_ [1954] Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. _Power: A New Social Analysis_ [1938], ch. 16 "Power Philosophies" Unfortunately, however, power is sweet, and the man who in the beginning seeks power merely in order to have scope for his benevolence is likely, before long, to love the power for its own sake. --Bertrand Russell (18721970) British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate. "Benevolence and Love of Power" In _New York American_ [13 July 1934]. - Seven months ago I could give a single command and 541,000 people would immediately obey it. Today I can't get a plumber to come to my house. --H. Norman Schwarzkopf, III (1934 ) American general who commanded the U.S. forces in the Gulf War of 1991. In "Newsweek" [11 November 1991]. You Venetians, it is certain, are very wrong to disturb the peace of other states rather than to rest content with the most splendid state of Italy, which you already possess. If you knew how you are universally hated, your hair would stand on end ... do you believe that these powers in Italy, now in league together, are truly friends among themselves? Of course they are not, it is only necessity, and the fear which they feel of you and your power, that has bound them in this way ... You are alone, with all the world against you, not only in Italy but beyond the Alps too. Know then that your enemies do not sleep. Take good counsel, for, by God, you need Galeazzo Sforza. --Galeazzo Sforza (14441476) Duke of Milan. To Giovanni Gonnella, secretary of the Venetian republic. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 299. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Henry IV_, pt. 2 [1597], act 3, sc. 1, l. 31 You only have power over people as long as you don't take *everything* away from them. But when you've robbed a man of *everything* he's no longer in your power he's free again. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn (19182008) Russian novelist. _The First Circle_, ch. 17 [1968] Information is not power. If information were power, then librarians would be the most powerful people on the planet. --Bruce Sterling (b. 1954) American science fiction writer. Speech in Houston, Texas [23 May 1994]. To the tune of the strong, the weak must dance. --Nahman Syrkin (18681924) Political theorist. _Natzionale Freiheit_ [1917] - I think sometimes the Prime Minister should be intimidating. There's not much point being a weak, floppy thing in the chair, is there? --Margaret Thatcher (1925 ) British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [1979-1990]. On 'The Thatcher Years' (BBC I) [21 October 1993]. Being prime minister is a lonely job . . . You cannot lead from the crowd. --Margaret Thatcher (1925 ) British conservative stateswoman and Prime Minister [19791990]. _The Downing Street Years_ [1993], ch. 1 - If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements, corrupts even more. --Barbara Tuchman {nθe Wertheim} (19121989) American historian and author. _Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 191145_ [1970] - What do I care about the law? Hain't I got the power? --Cornelius Vanderbilt (17941877) American shipping and railroad magnate. Quoted in Matthew Josephson _The Robber Barons_ [1934]. [Comment in letter:] Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I will not sue you, for law takes too long. I will ruin you. --Cornelius Vanderbilt (17941877) American shipping and railroad magnate. Quoted in Matthew Josephson _The Robber Barons_ [1934]. - Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. --George Washington (17321799) American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution [17751783] and first president of the United States [17891797]. Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. --Daniel Webster (17821852) American orator and politician. Liberty never came from government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. Speech in New York [9 September 1912]. - A cult is a religion with no political power. --Tom Wolfe (b. 1931) American journalist and novelist. _In Our Time_ [1980], ch. 2 "Entr'actes and Canapes" On Wall Street he and a few others how many? three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? had become precisely that . . . Masters of the Universe. --Tom Wolfe (b. 1931) American journalist and novelist. _The Bonfires of the Vanities_, ch. 1 [1987] (Ellipsis in the original.) - - All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not so much that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted. --Missionaria Protectiva, Bene Gesserit (Fictional group from Frank Herbert _Dune_) ----- aggrandize [uh-GRAN-dyz; AG-ruhn-dyz], transitive verb: 1. To make great or greater; to enlarge; to increase. 2. To make great or greater in power, rank, reputation, or wealth; -- applied to persons, countries, etc. 3. To make appear great or greater; to exalt. diktat [dik-TAHT], noun: 1. A harsh settlement unilaterally imposed on a defeated party. 2. An authoritative decree or order. Ex.: And it would begin to encroach on another, more treasured, freedom: the right of the networks to broadcast what they choose independent of government diktat. --"Back to the smoke-filled room?" _The Economist_ [25 February 1995] eminence grise [ay-mee-nahn(t)s-GREEZ], noun: A person who wields power or exerts influence behind the scenes. Ex.: Considerably less known in the West than his comrades, he prefers the role of eminence grise. --They Made a Revolution, _Time_, November 5, 1968 fiat [FEE-uht; -at; -aht; FY-uht; -at], noun: 1. An arbitrary or authoritative command or order. 2. Formal or official authorization or sanction. hegemony (noun) Control or dominating influence by one person or group, especially by one political group over society or one nation over others juggernaut (noun) ['jκ-gκr-nat or -nawt] An inexorable power or object that crushes whatever is in its way. Mandarin (noun) ['man-dκ-rκn or -rin] Definition: In Webster's 1828 dictionary, a mandarin was a magistrate or governor of a province in China. From that root, the meaning of "mandarin" took on a disapproving tone in modern English until it came to refer to a behind-the-scenes powerbroker in government. It also means a member of an elite intellectual group or one who believes in rule by the cultural elite. Usage: Calling someone a "mandarin" with a small "m" usually is not flattering. However, "Mandarin," capital "M," refers to a group of Chinese dialects spoken in about 4/5 of China and centering on Beijing. The mandarin orange uses the same name because it is native to the same general area (southeastern Asia). omnipotent (adj.) Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force. Synonyms: all-powerful, almighty plenipotentiary (adj.) [ple-ni-pκ-'ten-chi-e-ri or -'ten-chκ-ri ] Invested with full power to reach decisions. potentate [POH-tuhn-tayt], noun: One who possesses great power or sway; a ruler, sovereign, or monarch. prepotency [pree-POTE-n-see], noun: The quality or condition of having superior power, influence, or force; predominance. puissant [PWISS-uhnt; PYOO-uh-suhnt; pyoo-ISS-uhnt], adjective: Powerful; strong; mighty; as, a puissant prince or empire. Ex.: As an upcoming young corporate lawyer in San Francisco in the 1930's, Crum tended the interests of some of California's most puissant businesses, starting with William Randolph Hearst's newspaper empire. --Richard Lingeman, "The Last Party," _New York Times_ [27 April 1997] tycoon (noun) An amasser of great wealth and power, especially in business end page | PACIFISM & PAIN | PAINTING - PARENTING | PARIS - PASSPORTS | PAST (THE) - PATRIOTISM | PEACE - PERCENTAGES | PEOPLE | PERCEPTIONS - PERSUASION | PESSIMISM - PHILOSOPHY | PHONIES - PHYSICS | PIANO - PLANS | PLACES | PLANTS - POETRY | POISON - POLITICAL PARTIES | POLITICS & POLITICIANS | POLLS - POPES | POPEYE - POTENTIAL | POVERTY | POWER | PRACTICALITY - PRAYER | PREACHERS - PREPARED (BE) | PRESENT (THE) - (THE) PRESS | PRETENTIONS - PRIVACY | PROBLEMS - PROGRESSIVES | PROGRESS - PROPAGANDA | PROPOSALS - PUBLIC (THE) | PUBLIC OPINION - PURPOSE (ON HAVING A) | QUALITIES - QUIPS | QUIRKS - QUOTATIONS | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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